The Writing on the Wall
by Stella Luce 333
Summary: The Doctor investigates strange Marks that have begun appearing all over London. He meets a nice, normal girl named Alice Murray, but Alice is not as nice or normal as she appears. Is she a friend…or a foe? Part 1. ON HOLD
1. Chapter 1

**Takes place in the middle of Series 7, between The Snowmen & The Bells of Saint John.**

Alice's POV:

My morning started with an encrypted message on my phone.

 _TARDIS detected in your area. Proceed. Proceed!_

I smiled. They didn't have to tell me twice.

I put my phone back in my bag as I took a deep breath, looking in the mirror. This was it. This was what I had been training for. This was the day that I would finally come face to face with the Doctor.

With a confident nod of my head, I grabbed my bag & left my flat. It was time to get to work.

* * *

"Welcome to Captain Smollett's! Can I interest you in a Treasure Combo today?" I asked, forcing some perkiness into my voce. I looked up & was surprised to find the Doctor standing right in front of me.

"Can you tell me why there's a hotbed of transdimensional radiation coming from this restaurant?"

I was so shocked to see him, that it took me a minute to register his question. "…Sorry?"

"Transdimensional radiation." At my blank look, he explained. "Its radiation left behind when somebody travels through space & time."

"I…really have no idea what you're talking about." I said. I switched back to my Customer Service Voice. "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

Just then, a long, terrified scream came from the back. It sounded like somebody was horribly in pain…

The Doctor leapt over the counter with surprising ease, given how he dressed like some raggedy professor with a stupid bow tie, & started to run to the back.

"Hey! Nobody's allowed back here except staff!" I said, following him.

The screams seemed to be coming from the alleyway behind the restaurant. I made sure the few others who were curious about the screaming got back to work before following the Doctor into the alleyway. He was standing over Mr. Johnson, my supervisor.

Make that the _body_ of Mr. Johnson. He was unnaturally still, & the screaming had stopped.

"…What the hell is going on?" I asked when I could find my voice. It definitely was not my Customer Service Voice.

"He seems to have suffered a massive electrical shock." said the Doctor, who had pulled out a small torch & was examining the body. "But nothing on Earth could've done this." He stood, clicked off his light & turned towards me. "Oh, that's not good." He was staring at the wall. I took a few hesitant steps towards him so I could see what he was looking at.

"It's just some weird graffiti." I said. It looked like a rectangle with three circles in it, with some wavy lines coming out of the top.

"No." the Doctor said. "It's the Mark of the Hunt."

"The Mark of the Hunt?" I repeated. "What's that?"

"It was used by the Cronzins, a long time ago. They would scout out their prey, leave this Mark, & send their trained Xolis eels to hunt." He shook his head. "But they were just a simple race of hunters & gatherers. They never had the capability of space travel, much less time travel. Even so, their home world was captured by the Daleks. There wouldn't be any of them left…"

"Don't eels have to live in water?" I asked.

"No, a Xolis eel is used to a sandy climate. They can easily travel over land & can even grow to be 20 feet…long…" As he trailed off, I was suddenly aware of the wind rustling through the loose garbage…unless it was something else.

"Get back inside. Quickly!"

We both managed to get back inside & shut the door before _something_ bashed into the side of it…Something big…

I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, & that's when I knew.

My adventure was just beginning…

* * *

 **If you want to know what Alice looks like, go to my Tumblr (same username, no spaces). I plan on posting her picture in the next few days, but if you don't see her right away, click on the OCs link along the top.**

 **Next time, Alice & the Doctor will continue to get to know each other, & for one of them, the Mark of the Hunt will hit close to home…**

 **Please review!**


	2. Chapter 2

Alice's POV:

I quickly ushered the Doctor into my office & shut the door. He took my seat behind the desk.

"What the hell was that?" I asked.

"Who's in charge here?" the Doctor asked, ignoring my question.

"Mr. Johnson." I said. "But I guess, in light of the circumstances, I would be next in command. I'm the assistant manager."

"So your computer would have access to all the important data." He shook the mouse to wake it up. "Has anybody else gone missing? Anybody not show up for work when they were supposed to?"

"Um...yeah, actually. I was put on the registers because we are short staffed." I walked around to my side of the desk, but the Doctor made no effort to get out of my chair, so I awkwardly leaned over him to pull up the attendance records.

"Jesse Harding & Mary Sue Campbell are out today."

"Is that unusual for them to not show up when they should be working?" the Doctor asked.

"Well, Jesse is a student, so this is his first job. He gets a little busy around exam time, sometimes forgets to let us know about schedule conflicts, but otherwise he does good work." I said. "But Mary Sue...she's probably one of our best employees. She's able to calm the most irate customers. She is both pleasant & charming on the registers. In the kitchen, she's quick & always makes every order correctly. She's trained in just about every role in our restaurant...Missing work without calling is very out of character for her..."

"People have disappearing from right under your nose. You didn't even notice."

I was about to defend myself when there was a knock at the door & Brody stuck his head in.

"Hey, uh...the registers are acting up again. Number 2 is frozen."

"I'll call IT, thanks Brody." I said. "Just open one of the others for now."

"Mind if I take a crack at it? I'm really good with technology." the Doctor said, standing up. He pulled out his psychic paper. "John Smith, code name: the Doctor. I'm with Health & Safety."

"Didn't know Health & Safety workers got code names." Brody said. "That's awesome."

"The Doctor's here because um...we have a rat problem in the ally with the dumpster, & there are some concerns that they may have been exposed to something...icky. Spread the word. Make sure nobody goes out there."

"What about the trash?" he asked.

"Just keep it inside. At the end of the day, we'll take it across the street to one of the other restaurant dumpsters."

He nodded, & left.

"Nice work." the Doctor said.

"Thanks." I said. "I just don't want them to panic."

"You've got a giant eel in your alleyway. Panicking is exactly what you should be doing."

* * *

The Doctor spent most of the day poking around the kitchens or sitting in the dining room, being more hindrance than help. At the end of the night, I went over to his table, where he was fiddling with his sonic screwdriver.

"Closing time, Doctor." I said. "I can't let you stay here overnight."

"Oh, I won't be any trouble. You won't even know I'm here."

I rolled my eyes. "I really can't. It's against company policy. You're welcome to come back in the morning, but as we say in the food industry, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here." We were the last ones to leave, & I locked the door behind us.

I headed for home. When I arrived, I noticed one of my neighbors sitting on the porch. She was an elderly woman, kind hearted but old fashioned.

"Hello, Ms. Miller." I said as I approached. "How are you this evening?"

"The graffiti problem is getting worse." she said. "There are brand new drawings all over the side of the building. It's a gang sign, I think. We're being overrun with hoodlums!"

"Just think of it as a public art display." I said, ignoring the bigoted undertones for now. I was far too tired. I had stayed late to cover the rest of Mr. Johnson's shift. "A little graffiti never hurt anyone." I started to walk towards my flat, but then the impact of her words hit me.

"Where did you say the graffiti was?" I asked.

"It's on the back of the building." She continued to complain about the state of things, as I ran around to the back.

The Mark of the Hunt was painted on my building.

* * *

 **I'm sorry it's taken me so long to post this chapter! I was so excited about this idea, that I started it right away…without loosely planning the plot. But, I have a pretty good idea of where we're headed, so updates should come more frequently now!**

 **Next time, we'll start ramping up the action as the Doctor & Alice continue to investigate!**

 **Please review!**


	3. Chapter 3

Alice's POV:

I arrived at work the next morning & made an unsettling discovery.

The door was slightly ajar.

I turned, looking up & down the street, but nothing else seemed out of place. It was just another ordinary morning...but I _knew_ I locked the door last night. I had even given it a little tug to make sure it was secure.

With a feeling of dread in my stomach, I opened the door & slipped inside. All of the tables & chairs had been pushed to the sides of the room, but otherwise everything seemed quiet.

"...Hello?" I called out. I immediately felt silly for doing so. I was often the first one here, since I had a key. It wasn't like I had never been alone here before...

I just had to get a grip, not be so jumpy...

I started walking across the floor to the registers, when I felt my foot catch on something. Suddenly, something fell on top of me, knocking me to the floor. I screamed, trying to fight back, certain that it was that Xolis eel, or the Cronzin, or whatever it was that the Doctor had been talking about, when I realized it was...rope?

I was caught in a net.

"Ah ha! I've got you now!" the Doctor cried, jumping out of his hiding spot. "Now, you're going to tell me why you've come to this planet...Wait, you're not the Cronzin."

"Doctor." I said. "What the hell are you doing here? I _know_ I locked that door last night."

"I'm very good with locks." he said, pulling away the net & helping me to my feet.

"No sign of it, then?"

"No." He sounded disappointed. "It doesn't make sense. It should have come back to the Mark by now..."

"It's not just this one Mark." I said. "I saw it on my flat last night. It's everywhere." I pulled out my phone. "It even has its own hashtag."

"If I could just figure out where it's hiding, then I'd know where to look..." he muttered as he scrolled through the pictures I had found online."I just need to plot the metadata..." He turned to me. "Back in a tic. Just need to check something."

"That's my phone!" I said as he ran off. I hurried after him, pausing only once to survey the mess he had left behind. It could wait.

I followed him, at a distance, a block down the street when I saw him go into an old Police telephone box.

The TARDIS.

Ok, this was a big moment. According to the research, how somebody reacted to the TARDIS could make or break their time spent with the Doctor.

Luckily, there was a formula to it...

I took a deep breath as I approached. Then, I pushed on the door.

Even though I had studied & trained for this assignment, nothing could've truly prepared me for what the inside of the TARDIS was like. Big was an understatement. It was massive.

The Doctor hadn't yet noticed I had followed him, so I allowed myself a little squeak of surprise as I took it all in.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"I...You have my phone." I said.

"Oh, right, sorry. Here you go." He tossed it lightly at me, & I caught it. I'd have to trust that the safeguards on it were enough to keep it secure.

"So...uh...this place...it's..."

"Yes?" He seemed to waiting for me to say the right thing.

"It's...bigger...on the inside?" I asked. The Doctor seemed pleased. Good. I had passed that part of the test.

"Yes, it is." he said with a smile.

"But...what is it?"

"It's my ship."

"What kind of ship?" I asked, looking around wide-eyed, taking it all in.

"My TARDIS." he said with a smile. "It stands for Time and Relative Dimensions in Space."

"I drive past this every day to come to work. How have I never noticed this before?"

"Oh, you humans. You're always ignoring what's right under your nose." I hid a smile as a beep came from the console. If the Doctor thought I was human, then my bio damper was doing its job.

"By extracting the location metadata of the pictures, we can find out where they were taken. Plot all those points onto a map, & we should have a center point...there." He pointed to an empty space in the center of the map. "That is where all the points converge."

"What's there?"

"I don't know. Let's go find out." the Doctor said. "But not in the TARDIS, it could be very dangerous if the wrong hands got a hold of it."

"Ok." I said. "I'll drive."

* * *

"What is that?" I asked, but the Doctor was already getting out of the car. We were pulled over, behind a shopping center near my neighborhood.

There was a shimmer in the air, almost like when you could see the humidity coming off the pavement on a hot day...but it was nowhere near warm enough for that to happen.

"It's a portal." the Doctor said when I caught up to him.

"A portal...to where?" I asked.

"Good question. Let's find out." He straightened his bow tie. "Geronimo!" He ran towards the portal & disappeared.

I was taken aback. The Doctor was supposed to be one of the most dangerous beings in the entire universe...but he just ran into a strange portal without researching, testing, or otherwise deeming it safe.

Maybe that's _why_ he's dangerous...

I knew one thing for certain. I was going to have to follow him in there.

So I followed his lead.

I ran to the portal & jumped through into the unknown.

* * *

 **Now that Alice has learned more about the Doctor, now it's time for him to learn more about her! Next time, we'll start to get to know Alice a little bit better…or at least, what she's chosen to reveal!**

 **Please review!**


	4. Chapter 4

Alice's POV:

"...Where are we?" I asked on the other side of the portal. An impossible number of stars, more than I had ever seen in my life, filled the sky. We were standing on a rocky surface, almost as if we were walking on the moon...

The Doctor pointed to a cluster of stars. "Do you see that very tiny, very faint star way over there?"

"Yeah?"

"That's your Sun."

" _WHAT?"_ Suddenly, my surroundings took on an entirely new meaning. "That means...it's...this is...outer space. We're in outer space!"

"I know." the Doctor said with a smile.

"So this is another planet?" I asked, excitedly.

"No, that's being too generous. It's too small for that, & we don't seem to be in any kind of orbit. I'd say we're standing on a piece of space rock, just floating in the universe."

My excitement turned to dread in an instant.

"Doctor...if we're just standing on an asteroid or something... _how are we still breathing?_ " A little bit of panic crept into my voice.

"Good question." the Doctor said, nonchalantly. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver & waved it in the air before examining it. "There's an atmospheric bubble surrounding us. Plenty of air to breathe." He picked up a loose pebble & dropped it. "Gravity seems to be the same as Earth, too."

"Is this where the Cronzins are from?" I asked. "Some space rock in the middle of nowhere?"

"No, Cronzinia looks nothing like this." the Doctor said as he walked off. I hurried to catch up to him. "It was a dry, harsh, desert climate."

"So what happened?"

"The Daleks happened."

"The...Daleks?" I asked. "What are they? Some other kind of alien race?"

"The worst kind of alien race." the Doctor said, bitterly. "The Cronzins were a relatively simple people, but as their name suggests, they did manage to develop very basic time travel technology. Their planet was one of the only sources for Cronzinium, an element that can be used to power time machines. The Daleks wanted that resource...so they took it."

"Ok, but what about the Cronzins themselves?" I asked. "What happened to them?"

"When the Daleks want something, they don't usually leave behind any survivors."

We walked in silence for a while, as I tried to process what the Doctor had just said.

"So what about that Mark of the Hunt?" I asked. "How does that work?"

"Pretty simple, really." the Doctor said. "The Cronzin hunter would scout out a possible food source. He'd leave the Mark, & send the Xolis eel to do the dirty work, since Cronzins were pretty weak physically."

"So the Mark is like a dinner bell?" I asked.

The Doctor launched into a very detailed explanation, which I tuned out because I had felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. _Something_ was behind us...something big...

"Um, Doctor?" I said, tugging on his sleeve so he'd shut up. "I don't think we're alone anymore."

We turned to find the Xolis eel behind us. It towered over us, standing nearly its full height, ready to pounce. It screeched at us, giving us a glimpse of its very sharp teeth.

"What do we do?" I asked. The Doctor reached over & took my hand.

"Run!" The Doctor tugged me to the side, just as the beast struck.

Thanks to the Doctor, it got a mouthful of space rock instead of us...

* * *

"I think we lost it." the Doctor said, as we hid behind an outcropping of rock to catch our breath.

"Yeah, & in the process you've gotten us lost, too." I said. "How are we going to get home?"

"There!" The Doctor pointed just beyond the outcropping. I looked & saw a shimmer in the air. The portal! We must have gone in a complete circle!

Suddenly, a screech came from behind us. The Xolis eel had spotted us. It raised itself up to attack, it was about to strike...when a shrill whistle pierced the air. I covered my ears, but the whistle seemed to pierce through me.

"Sounds like your master is calling you!" the Doctor yelled over the sound, although he also had covered his ears. Amazingly, the Xolis eel turned around, crawling away. We were safe.

"Come on." the Doctor said as the whistle stopped. We ran in the opposite direction, back through the portal to the shopping center parking lot. We didn't stop running until we got to my car. We jumped in. I turned the keys & hit the gas, giving us a burst of speed.

"Is it still following us?" I asked, checking my rearview mirror.

"No, I don't think so." the Doctor said. "Look out!"

I turned my attention forward just in time to notice the traffic ahead of us stopped at a red light. I slammed on the brakes, just barely avoiding a fender bender with the car in front of us.

"Sorry." I said, catching my breath. "You can just throw that stuff in the back." A bunch of junk had slid forward from the back, & now pooled around the Doctor's feet.

" _Rock Climber's Monthly_?" he asked, inspecting an old magazine that had slid forward.

"Just a hobby." I said. "There's a climbing wall place near my flat, & I just find it really helps me chill out, be in the present moment, you know? I'd love to actually climb a real mountain sometime."

The Doctor wasn't listening. He had already moved on to the next thing in the pile. "Ooh, this looks interesting. _Principles of Environmental Science._ "

"That was my major at university." I said as the light turned green & traffic began to move. "Green energy is the future. I wanted to be a part of it, help save the world."

"So why aren't you?"

"Because I need to pay rent?" I said. "Besides, it's 2019. Nobody actually has a job related to their major anymore..."

"2019?" the Doctor asked, surprised. "Darn. I was aiming for a little bit earlier..."

"So, what do we do now?" I asked. "About the Cronzin & the Xolis eel?"

"We put a stop to it."

* * *

 **Next time, our heroes come up with a plan to save the world! But you know what they say about best laid plans…**

 **Please review!**


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